


Three Things The Winchesters Know

by gointorosedale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:52:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gointorosedale/pseuds/gointorosedale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what it says on the tin: Three things the Winchester men know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Things The Winchesters Know

1\. **Lies Can Be My Truth**

 

John Winchester

 

John Winchester knows about lies.

He knows about lies, and telling them and why people tell them and, the most important: why they're good. Because humanity is hypocritical. For all that parents teach their children that lies are wrong, for all that  _ he  _ teaches his children that lies are wrong, everyone knows it's more complicated than that. Everyone knows that sometimes lies are justified, and in John's life 'sometimes' is simply more common. So he lies a lot. 

All sorts of lies, big complicated lies about his identity and his past and his_ truth_, about fires and ceilings and the things he does. He lies about little things, will sometimes omit things here and there when recounting a tale, because people deserve that, they deserve to be spared the gory details. He lies to Sam about his job, and about Mary and he lies to his friends about the things he does for a living, but that's okay.

John doesn't really see himself as a liar, because the lies he tells have a purpose. To protect, most of the time, to protect Sam or his friends or his family or the random strangers that cross his path while he's on a hunt. Himself, too, like when he lies to the police and says he didn't know the man who turned up dead at his doorstep.

John Winchester knows a lot about lies, and he finds it slightly ironic that he is one of the few who knows the truth.  

(but then, maybe that's a requirement for knowing the truth. To be a liar)

   
 

2.** Only The Essentials**  
 

Dean Winchester

  
Dean Winchester doesn't know a lot.

He knows hunting, but not a lot more than that. He knows how to kill a werewolf and what a wendigo is, and he knows what it's like to have a ghost sickness and the remedy for it. He knows that demons are real and salt keeps them away and he knows that humans are harder to hunt then monsters. Dean knows that supernatural evil is simpler and plainer and more straightforward than human evil, and that a Trickster is killed with a stake covered in the blood of their victim.

But there is a lot Dean doesn't know. He doesn't know, for instance, what Disneyland looks like, or how to play baseball (he didn't have the time, he already had to take Sammy to soccer practice). He doesn't know how expensive brand clothes feel, or what prom night is like how ghost stories can be fun for reasons other than gathering info.

  
Dean doesn't mind not knowing those things, though, won't ever complain that he doesn't have a good life because he does. It's just that, when he thinks about it, he really only knows the things he has to, the things Dad forced him to learn since he was five years old. Dean doesn't know random facts like Sammy does, doesn't know famous books or writers, doesn't know how to calculate the speed of an oncoming train (because, come on, why would you _need _to know that? If there's an oncoming train, get off the track, right?).

But all of that, it's really okay because Dean knows how to hunt, how to track and kill and how to keep him and his family safe and it's all he really needs to know in this life.

  
   
 

3\. **Tied To Nothing  
**

Sam Winchester

 

Sam Winchester knows freedom.

He knows what it's like to wake up to a new town everyday, to not be bound to one place, to see the skies spread out endlessly and there's no one else around to see it because he's on the road, it's four AM and there's just him, Dean and the sky. Sam knows what it's like to sit on the hood of the car and watch the world wake up.

He also knows what it's like to stand on the open road that stretches out far ahead of him and he's able to go in every direction, because he's run away and now he doesn't ever have to listen to Dad again. Sam knows what it's like to have the future lying, waiting for him to just pick it up, knows what it's like to be able to take that everywhere. 

Sam knows freedom and it's many variations and so he knows that freedom can sometimes be very confining.

He knows that, sometimes, freedom is like a great African snake, constricting around him because there is so much of it, it fills up his world. He knows that, with only freedom there is no constant, no steady line, and everything is messed up. Sam has felt the way freedom chokes you, constraining and constricting and it's painful, the press of freedom and the knowledge that there is nothing waiting for him. There is no more than what he finds, makes, creates because he has nothing, because that makes him _free._  

People sing, talk, write, _dream_ about freedom, and there are endless poems about how people long for it, but Sam Winchester knows freedom and he knows that freedom is not a good thing. It's a lack of good things.

 


End file.
